The relationships among orthographic components of word identification andspelling for grades 1-6

Students in grades la who were part of the norming sample for the Kaufman T est of Educational Achievement took both a word identification task, Readin g Decoding, and a spelling test. Each word in both tests was coded for ling uistic components: number of phonemes, consonant blends, vowel digraphs, co nsonant digraphs, r-controlled vowels, silent markers, and regular or irreg ular pronunciation/spelling of the word. For each student a regression anal ysis was performed to predict whether the student could successfully pronou nce (spell) the word using the linguistic components as predictors. The reg ression weights were then used in various multivariate analyses along with overall word identification and spelling performance to investigate relatio nships among the variables. Correlations among the two sets of variables, word identification and spell ing linguistic components and achievement, indicated generally high correla tions at all grade among linguistic components and achievement, and between word identification and spelling achievement. Structural equation models w ere developed at each grade, treating linguistic components as exogenous va riables and achievements as endogenous. Specific patterns varied at each gr ade level that appeared to be consistent with instructional emphases at eac h grade level in both reading and spelling. For example, phonemic length wa s important at grades 1-2 but not beyond, for both reading and spelling, wh ile components such as vowel digraphs and silent markers vary with grade in their importance for reading and spelling. Word regularity is more importa nt to spelling than reading beyond grade 2, as students encounter increasin g difficult spelling words. Regularity in word identification does not appe ar to play a role in upper grade activities.